‘Almost Famous’ star Patrick Fugit reveals the fates of William and Penny

Almost Famous debuted exactly 20 years ago as of Sept. 13, 2020, but the celebration has continued well into 2021.

The Cameron Crowe classic will get the 4K Ultra HD treatment from Paramount Home Entertainment on Tuesday (July 13), following the first-ever release of the film's entire soundtrack in the form of this limited edition box set.

All of this has brought Patrick Fugit, who starred as high schooler William Miller as he embeds with fictional band Stillwater for a Rolling Stone magazine feature, back into the spotlight. And the now-38-year-old actor still has the tea all these years later, including the fates of his character and Penny Lane (Kate Hudson).

"Cameron and I talked about that when we were [filming] in New York, and I asked him the same thing," Fugit told IndieWire. "I was like, 'Now that he knows Lady Goodman, do they ever go to Morocco? Do they ever do the things they say they’re going to do?' And Cameron is like, 'Brother, no, they don't.'"

"He's like, 'But what William will discover is Polexia [Anna Paquin] a few years down the line, and they will have a relationship," he continued. "They will have this amazing chemistry that they didn’t really track [before] because, obviously William was infatuated with Penny Lane and Polexia was doing her own thing. The idea [with Penny] was like, ‘Nope, it's just this thing that happened, and it's this fond memory, and it's the first love and all that sort of thing, but it's never going to manifest."

Fugit also revealed that he "for sure" prefers the Almost Famous "Bootleg" cut, which contains 40 extra minutes of footage, that was available on the 2001 DVD and will be again in the new 4K release.


"When I first saw the theatrical cut, it felt so short to me, because it was seven months of my life condensed into a feature-length film, and I was like, 'Well, that’s not what happened. That's like the footnotes of what happened,'"  he added to IndieWire. "So then, when I finally saw the Bootleg cut a couple of years later, I was like, 'Yes, this has a lot more of the textures that we got. It has a lot more.'"


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